


The Language of Anything

by Metis_Ink



Category: Tales of Xillia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Minor Character Death, spilling sea of emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metis_Ink/pseuds/Metis_Ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia is in gold when they first meet. She’s smiling, and the sun bears its rays to her thirteen year old figure with love. She hums village melodies with the rhythm of the summer cicadas, watching the sunflowers sway in the field before her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Language of Anything

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Giantwaste, who is forever deprived of the Agreria no matter how much Giantwaste Agria art is made. Where is the Agreria. 
> 
> Aka. Another Fic That Wasn't Suppose to Get This Long.doc / Folder: My Life / Date: 5 AM

Leia is in gold when they first meet. She’s smiling, and the sun bears its rays to her thirteen year old figure with love. She hums village melodies with the rhythm of the summer cicadas, watching the sunflowers sway in the field before her.

Nadia cringes. The girl is off-tune and overenthusiastic, but has the expression of a careless child. Those in the city wouldn't make such a mistake to embarrass themselves in public like this.  When she turns to leave, the humming stops, and so do her footsteps.

“Miss. Travis?”

She can’t think of why she stopped, but something compels her to turn around again. The village girl is on her feet. The light breeze pushes her yellow dress against her knees, her wide eyes fixated on Nadia’s scowling form. Her surprised look melts away after a long look at the older girl, replacing itself with a wide grin. Nadia tenses with emotion, not hiding her mask of irritation. What was she smiling at?

“I didn’t expect anyone to be this far into the fields!” she laughs, seeming nervous, pulling her straw hat down over her embarrassed face. “You didn’t hear me doing stuff, did you?”

“No,” Nadia says before she can even think. There’s no reason for me to correct her, she thinks immediately afterwards. It’d be a waste of my time.

“Oh.” The girl laughs, looking up from the floppy brim of her hat with a relieved smile. “You came out here to see the sunflowers, then, didn’t you?”

“Why would I come out here to see a bunch of overgrown weeds?” Nadia sneers, though there is only half-truth in her words. The other villagers wouldn’t stop pestering her with their not-so-subtle rumors. What her family would do to their farms. What those _Travises_ wanted on their stupid vacation to their stupid village. How their daughter couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Nadia always kept her mouth shut. It was them who kept trying to get her to talk. Fools.

“Hey! Our sunflowers are not weeds!” The girl pouts, her hands planting themselves onto her hips. “They’re the best sunflowers in Leronde. Even better because we’ve got the best spot for them to enjoy this nice and hot summer!”

“You’re calling this heat nice?” Nadia hisses, covering her white forearms. The girl is as tan as dirt. Nadia bets she never burns, the ungrateful cretin. “It’s over a hundred, dammit.”

“That’s what makes it so nice for the sunflowers! They love it!” The girl throws her head back to the cloudless sky, and Nadia shields herself from the white summer heat. God, this girl liked to spoil her mood. “It’s such a beautiful day to watch them, too. Don’t you think?”

“Nobody has the time to watch plants grow, moron,” Nadia retorts. “Well, nobody except you.”

“Everybody should have their daily flower-watching time,” the girl huffs. She glides over to Nadia’s place on the road. Nadia flinches when the girl touches her wrist, but can’t stop when she grapples a hold of Nadia completely. “Come on, I’ll tell you all about them!”

“I’ve got things to do, brat!” Nadia snaps at the younger girl, but the grip, to her horror, only tightens. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You definitely have better things to do if you’re this grumpy on a day like this! And in the middle of a sunflower farm! It’s not normal!” The girl says, her rough hands still wrapped around Nadia’s wrist no matter how much she pulled. She’s glaring at the city girl, but Nadia finds it hard to find it threatening with the wind throwing her tan hair all over her face.

“You’re the one who’s not normal, you smell like wet dog,” Nadia growls. She's about to shut the girl up when she opens her mouth again, but luckily, someone beats her to it.

“Leia!”

 The grip on Nadia’s wrist loosens immediately at the sound of the voice, and a pale boy with dark hair jog up to the girl before her. He looks just as scrawny and helpless as his friend. They must be perfect for each other.

“Jude!” The  girl yelps in surprise, and just as she turns, Nadia pulls her hand out of the girl’s grip and spins around. “Hey!”

“Be lame without me, brat,” Nadia called back. She didn’t bother with a glance back or a wave, just imagining the two kids frozen and confused behind her. She smirks in victory, and stomps back down the dirt road.

“Miss. Travis! Wait!” The girl, Leia’s, cries out, but Nadia only continues on and on. Her voice soon dies out, and the white sky shrouded by Leronde’s tall trees.

Nadia sighs as she wanders back into the island village, winding through the narrow road. She was about to die from secondhand embarrassment there. What did they think; that she would just roll around in the grass with a couple of shitty country kids? Hell no.

Though, she passes through the streets and feels the prying eyes of the villagers again.  She remembers then why she preferred walking down that sunny road again.

(The relief she felt, at Leia's genuine smile.)

☀☀☀

 

 

Despite her wishes, they meet again, three years later. Because Nadia is nineteen when the fire takes everything.

She wants to wake up to her father, for some reason. After everything she’s said to him over the past nineteen years, whenever he was home for her. She wants to see his carefree smile, the one he used whenever he hugged her or apologized. She wants to wake up and hear him laugh and cry and say “Don’t ever scare me like that again.” Just like when she woke up all those years ago after that week in her kidnapper’s basement.

She wants to yell at him for being an idiot, for digging her out of the rubble when it would have been so easy for him to escape by himself. She wants to yell at him for not following her, for getting trapped in that blazing, vicious, monstrous house. The one that was her home for so many years.

But she doesn’t. She can’t. Because when she wakes up, there’s a girl holding her hand. One with tired eyes and tanned skin and a soft, relieved smile.

“You’re awake,” she says.

Nadia doesn’t reply for a moment, but she can feel a warmth spread through her limp hand. Her voice comes out in a croak, “What…?”

“Oh, wait, don’t talk!” Her voice rings through Nadia’s ears like a whistle, making the older cringe. “You shouldn’t use your voice a lot, you breathed in a lot of smoke.”

No shit, Nadia thinks, but takes her advice anyways because her throat hurts like hell, just like the rest of her body. She wants to ask where her father is. If he’s okay. If he’s crying up a river over her.

(If he’s gone to see Mother.)

“Do you remember me? Just nod if you do,” the girl instructs her with a comforting smile.

At first, Nadia can’t. Her mind is a clouded haze, filled with a mantra of where’s Father, where’s Father, where’s Father rolling through her head. But the girl keeps both of her hands on Nadia’s, her humming soft and  her gaze warm on Nadia’s lifeless face. Bright eyes, hair paled by sunlight, her rough hands demanding, but—

“Crazy sunflower girl…” Nadia croaks out in a moment of surprise, making Leia shush her again.

“I told you that you can’t speak right now!” Leia scolds her, but her seriousness fades away in a blink. “…I’m really glad you remember me,” she laughs. “I thought you wouldn’t, all I did was annoy you, didn’t I?”

Yes, Nadia thinks, but her mind fills with the glowing smile of a young girl, bordered by gold and swaying sunflowers. She glares at the girl anyway, suppressing her thoughts as fast as they arrived.

“Well, I guess you’re gonna be stuck with me some more, huh?” Leia tells Nadia. “I thought that… when I heard it was you that came in… maybe you wanted to see someone familiar?” Leia blushes, taking her hands off of Nadia’s. “I wanted to help you. Maybe it’s just me being selfish, but I told them I could be your nurse. Jude and I. Jude’s the real student nurse here, I’m just tagging along…” Leia sighs and then turns back to Nadia. “I… I’ll go get the doctor, okay? He’s supposed to be the one to tell you everything.”

Leia stands up, and Nadia fights the urge to grab her again because dammit, she didn’t tell her to leave. Where did she think she was going? She didn’t need a damn doctor in here.

(Because that doctor would tell her things that Leia couldn’t.)

(Like why she didn’t mention Father.)

Leia’s footsteps fade out of the room, the closing of the hospital room door trapping her in a cold silence.

 

☀☀☀

 

Time slows her days at the hospital, even more as she struggles to suppress the grief. Grieving is for the weak; her father didn’t raise her to be weak.

She doesn’t cry like Leia does when Nadia loses her first roommate to stomach cancer. She doesn't cry when she finds out that her next one is an eight year old experimentation victim. Nadia instead smashes a flower vase, the sound ringing though her empty room.

Leia’s not as competent as Jude, the actual student nurse. But Nadia’s still not willing to have a sixteen year old sticking needles into her arms.

“He’s a genius,” Leia tells her, once, when Elize is sleeping; quiet in the bed next to her’s that evening. She sets Nadia’s food down on the bedside table gives her an expression mixed with pride and unsureness. “He’s one of the youngest students in Talim, you can trust him. Elize loves him a lot.”

Nadia doesn’t like Jude, though she doesn’t like anyone there, but he’s not as bad as the rest. He’s respectable, at least, and doesn’t bother her for no reason.

“A lot less quiet than you,” Nadia tells Leia, and rummages through her possessions on the table for a brush, handing it to the nurse. “You’re always going off and tripping over everyone’s feet, I can’t believe they keep letting you in here.” Nadia smirks at the younger girl, who has an offended expression on her face. Sometimes Nadia wishes the girl never got so used to her insults. It made it seem as if they were befriending each other.

“They let me in here because I’m doing so well with taking care of your stubborn butt!” Leia replies, pouting like she always does. Still, she takes the brush and sits down on Nadia’s bed, taming Nadia’s shortened hair. It feels strange, how light it is now.

“As if,” Nadia scoffs, brushing away the thoughts. “Just having you around here makes it more unbearable to stay. When the hell am I getting out, anyways?”

Leia “humph”s, brushing Nadia’s hair out of her face with her hand so that she can pull it behind her ear. “Not for a couple more weeks. You’re just going to have to put up with me until then, young lady!”

“I bet Jude’s too nice to tell you what a brat you are,” Nadia says, even though she knows little Miss. Jude is too pure to even think anything bad about his childhood friend. She’s heard the nurse talk about Leia whenever he pulled her along to the examination rooms. How Nadia should be nicer to her because Leia cared about her so much. How Leia was working herself exhausted for her. How Jude cared about Nadia too, because after so many years of Leia talking about how “Miss. Travis” “Miss. Travis,” it was hard to see her as scary as Nadia tried to make herself out to be.

Leia always had to ruin everything, didn’t she?

“It’s a shame you had to cut it,” Leia tells Nadia, smoothing out her patient’s white locks. “I showed Elize what you looked like with it long, she said you were real pretty.”

“Hm,” Nadia grunts. “I don’t trust that kid.”

(Except she does, because she knows that this kid didn’t have the energy to lie about stuff like that.)

(She knows.)

“I think you look pretty either way,” Leia laughs, pushing herself off the bed.

“You would say that any way I looked,” Nadia tells her.

Leia brushes off her nurse’s uniform and gives Nadia a shy smile. “Because it’s true,” she tells Nadia, bopping her nose.

Nadia squirms at the sudden touch and swats Leia’s hand away. “What the… don’t do that! I’m not five, worm.”

“I know.”

She turns at the silence, and she sees Leia’s back to her, failing to hide her red ears. What an idiot, she thinks, blushing over stupid stuff like this.

“Did they turn that stupid sunflower field of yours into a parking lot yet?” Nadia asks and pokes Leia’s side.

Leia jumps and yelps, rubbing her waist. “N-No! Of course not, our flowers are too pretty to be a boring old parking lot!”

“Prettier like me?” Nadia says.

“Even prettier!”

“You’re a dirty little liar, aren’t you?”

Leia is soon fuming and blushing like no tomorrow.  Nadia howls with laughter at her antics until they both wake Elize up. Leia starts telling Elize how mean Nadia is, and the girl agrees with every other statement and glaring at the former heiress. Nadia just laughs at them, harder than she has before, under their heated glares.

(“It’s so obvious,” Nadia says. “That girl.”)

(“I suppose saying that's supposed to make it harder for me to know your feelings, too?” Jude replies, not smirking, just smiling, knowing.)

(“Shut the fuck up,” Nadia growls and throws her slipper at him. And Jude just laughs, and laughs, and laughs.)

☀☀☀

 

Leia wraps her in a hug at the hospital doors. Nadia swears to god if she starts crying she is going to push her into the street. “I’ll miss you,” she says, her voice pitched.

“Yeah, yeah, and I’ll think about you every day and night I’m gone and cry over your ugly mug.” Nadia rolls her eyes and pries the girl off of her.

“You better!” Leia wipes her eyes in a futile attempt to hide her tears. “You’re going so far away now after all the fun we had together!”

“Well, whoop dee doo,” Nadia snickers with a triumphant grin. Oh, was she not supposed to be doing that? “Sorry, but I think the doctor said it would be best if I got far, far away from you. Turns out you smell was turning my organs inside out. I could have died, you reeked so much.”

And that’s when Leia starts crying, and the worst part is that Nadia knows it’s not because of her insults. Or maybe it’s the part of it in which everyone in the hospital lobby is whispering at her and the crying girl in front of her. Nadia begins to panic, not because she cares about what they think, but because she doesn’t want to make a scene. Especially not one with a crying Leia and lobby of sick peasants.

“There’s a better job for me overseas, dumbass, it’s not your fault,” she reassures Leia, hesitant. She scowls at the younger, feeling awkward when she lifts a hand to pat Leia’s trembling shoulder. Except when she touches her, Leia scrambles back into Nadia’s arms, sobbing into her shoulder. Her tears soak Nadia’s new red shirt. Dammit, she just bought this thing.

(And Leia’s pressed up against her neck, lips moving to “You’re such a jerk, you don’t care that you’re leaving me." Nadia isn't supposed care about this girl’s stupid crush or her tight embrace or the familiar smell of her hair.)

But it’s over soon, because once again, Jude interrupts their ever-so romantic moment. A familiar “Leia!” rings through the lobby, and Nadia pulls away from her, brushing off her damp shoulder and pulling a face.

Jude gives them a knowing look, walking Elize to them by the hand, the younger girl holding his with affection. A lot of the patients fall for Jude one way or the other, but Jude seems to have fallen for Elize the moment he started talking to her. He’s always taking care of the little orphan, who clings to him like a lifeline. Especially when she was speechless for her first few weeks. He even bought her some hideous doll that she carries around everywhere.

“Elly! Are you going to say goodbye to Nadia?” Leia asks, skipping over to the duo. But ,as Nadia expects, the girl darts behind Jude, glaring at the former heiress with suspicion in her eyes..

“No,” she says, and Leia pouts that usual pout of hers, pinching Elize’s cheeks.

Nadia is about to leave right then and there, but something makes her stay. It would be rude to leave them hanging there. Her father did teach her something.

(Or maybe it was the face Leia made when Nadia told her where they transferred her to,still replaying in her brain.)

It catches her off-guard when Jude whispers something to the Elize and Leia, giving Elize a worried expression. Leia shoots Nadia a reassuring smile, and mouths something that looks like “I’m so happy for you.” But Nadia can't tell, because soon, she's walking Elize back down the hall. It's strange; Nadia isn’t sure how to respond.

But before she knows it, Jude has disappeared somewhere, and Nadia takes it as her cue to leave until—

“Nadia?”

“Shit!” Nadia curses and jumps a foot into the air. She swerves around and meets Jude’s surprised expression. “When the hell did you get there?”

“That’s a secret,” Jude tells her with a wink. Was this kid always this weird? He was supposed to be the normal one. “Would you like to talk outside? I’m sure the doctor already told you about all your post-stay activities, so don’t worry.”

“You about to confess your love to me or something, pretty boy? Sorry, but I think I’m a bit too feisty for your tastes,” she tells him with a red glare.

Jude flushes with embarrassment at the comment, but nonetheless, keeps his composure. He waves Nadia out the hospital doors and guides her to the outside. Shrugging, Nadia follows him out into the cool evening air, dragging her luggage with her.

“I’m sure Jiao said he would be sending someone to pick you up soon?” Jude says after  leading her just outside the hospital entrance He offers a comforting smile. Not appreciated by Nadia.

“Yeah, one of Elize’s test tube buddies. Pigeon or something.” Something about the guy being an older victim and him helping locate Elize and the other children. Nadia is sure they’d be good friends, Pigeon and Nadia.

“Lucky Jiao was able to get you that job, huh? I didn’t think President Gaius would be so quick to offer,” Jude tells her.

“You say that as if you know him,” Nadia replies, suspicious.

“Not very well, believe me,” Jude tells her. He runs a hand through his hair, pulling a thoughtful expression before breaking out into a grin. “I’m more acquainted with S—“

“Senator Maxwell,” Nadia finishes with a sigh.

“Yes, have I told you before?” Jude replies with a grin.

“Only five times a day for the past couple months,” Nadia replies, sneering.

Jude flinches, looking embarrassed. “Oh, uh, really? Well, you might be working closely with her, soon.”

“I doubt I’ll be that close with Rashugal officials in the Auj Oule government,” Nadia replies, and gives Jude a disbelieving look.

“Well, you never know,” Jude hums, and after that, they stand in silence for a little longer, watching the cars pass by. Fennmont is a dark and crowded city, not Nadia’s forte. Though, Kanblar sounds like some death sentence from what she hears from the rumors online.

“Hey, kid, what do you want?” She turns back to Jude, because he couldn’t have called her out here for just that. If he did, then she was going to just leave right there and then. She wouldn’t even bother pushing him into the street.

“Leia’s going to miss you a lot,” Jude tells her.

“I’ve noticed,” Nadia sighs, though it does make her relax a bit, thinking about her.

“You were her first love, you know,” Jude says next, and Nadia straightens up.

“…I think you’re missing something big, here, Nurse Jude,” Nadia replies, but first love, first love, Leia’s first love keeps echoing in her head. It’s stupid and annoying. What the hell was this kid going on about, not realizing Leia’s big, fat crush on the kid (“When I was like, eight!”) and telling Nadia she was this girl’s first love.

“You broke her heart when you didn’t watch the flowers with her that day,” Jude continues, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his grin wider than ever. “She was so mad at me that I let you walk away that day, and you left the next day, too.” Jude let out a nostalgic sigh. “She thought you were so beautiful, the day you walked into our village. She wanted to talk to you, but you were never exactly the approachable type.”

“I wasn’t in the mood,” Nadia replies honestly.

(Or were you just waiting for her?)

“Well, I don’t think you would have minded,” Jude says.

And Nadia hates how this kid always leaves her speechless.

“Oh, well, of course, I’ll miss you too,” the nurse stammers out awkwardly, blushing like the kid he is. “Not exactly because you were a good patient; you refused to take your medicine, snuck out of your room after-hours, stole Alvin’s food, dragged Elize outside and made he skip examinations… Ow!” Jude backs away from Nadia’s outstretched arm, an offended look crossing his face.

“I was the best damn patient you ever had, twinkie,” Nadia tells Jude, shoving her face up to his and glaring. “Ask lover girl back there.”

Jude just laughs, and it irritates Nadia to no end. But in the end, she thinks, he’s not all bad. She takes it as a sign that she hasn’t shoved him in front of an ambulance that she doesn’t mind talking to him about these kinds of things.

(It’s been so hard to trust people, these days.)

(Leia found it easy to step past that.)

Jude rubs away the red hand-shaped mark on his arm and looks out behind Nadia, where a black car approaches the two of them. Jude apparently recognizes this car, and gives Nadia one last smile before Pigeon’s car pulls up next to them.

“I want to adopt Elize.”

Nadia takes a moment to let it sink in, if Nurse Jude really just said that. As in, honest-to-god said that. “I hate to break it to you, kid…”

“Not now!” Jude retorts, waving his hands to her. “Well, I would if I could, but Dad can’t handle any more people at home. I know I’m not going to do too well being under aged and under experienced... But my friend, he’s a police officer around here, he adopted his daughter when he was eighteen. He found her starving in an alley and took her in as soon as he could even though he was so new and I thought, maybe I could do something like that. But in reality…”

Jude’s expression goes solemn, making Nadia cringe. She’s not ready to deal with these sappy people today, but she gets where he’s going. Not that she cares.

(She remembers the tight grip she had on her father when she came home that day, after her week in that basement, and all Elize has left to cling to is Jude, Jude, Jude.)

“You’ve done enough already,” Nadia pushes out. “That disgusting friend of yours is probably doing worse, anyways.”

He lets out a snort. “You’ve really made her happy, accepting her, you know,” Jude tells her. “Thank you. Maybe we’ll meet again one day.”

Nadia scoffs, and hands a dark-haired man, Pigeon, she supposes, her things.

“Hopefully not,” but she finds herself saying it with a smile, thinking of a bright-eyed girl and a golden-eyed nurse. She shoots him a final wave goodbye and steps into Pigeon’s (Wingul’s, he corrects her later) car. When they pull out, she finds herself looking back up at her fourth floor room. She's surprised to see Leia and Elize looking down at her with sad smiles, growing smaller in the distance.

(For a moment, Nadia thinks she sees Leia’s lips move slowly, and “I’m so happy for you” becomes “I love you.”)

“This isn’t an exactly free job,” Pigeon— Wingul interrupts her thoughts. “You won’t be seeing them soon.”

“I’m not planning to,” Nadia replies, but it’s soft, almost nonexistent.

She doesn’t anyway, because the next time she hears of them, Jude is dead and Leia dying in a hospital emergency room.

☀☀☀

 

It seems almost magical how much the hospital has changed over the past seven years.

It’s almost just as mystifying how things have stayed the same.

With Elize trapped in a deathly silence in the hospital room chair.

With Teepo strangled in a limp grip in her arms.

With Nadia in a room with tall white walls. Boxed in a room of cold silence. Leia’s hand in her’s.

(She’s so cold.)

 

☀☀☀

 

Nadia almost found it ironic, the day she remembered Leia being the day she heard of the accident.

(Two victims, both drivers dead, one survivor.)

It’s Jiao that tells her to go, and Gaius has already approved. Senator Maxwell was heading that way as well, as no coincidence to either of them. Presa tells her that she’ll take care of her work while she’s gone. Wingul most likely wants her to relay him information about Elize, so everyone’s against her this time, and she leaves.

(Maybe it wasn’t ironic at alll, that evening. When she brushed her cascading hair, and remembered a girl surrounded by a sea of sunflowers.)

Senator Maxwell is silent on their trip there. It’s strange because nobody has ever seen her with this sort of expression before. She gives her usual instructions, where they’ll be staying, who they’ll be seeing, all that jazz. But other than that there’s a lifeless expression in her eyes, always staring out the window.

(Nadia notices, the one time she looks up herself.)

Nadia, at times, regrets never asking for Leia’s number. She thought it would be childish to cling to a girl who fell for her on a lonely summer vacation. But Senator Maxwell is twenty-eight and still has the picture of a golden-eyed boy smiling awkwardly on the front screen of her phone.

(“Sometimes I feel like I’m looking up to him,” Leia admits, when she takes Nadia on her afternoon walk one day. “Like he’s my sunshine. He’ll never leave me.)

He’s gone now.

(Nadia has left too many times to be her sunshine.)

All that’s left now is a fallen queen, a teenage girl made an orphan two times too many, and a girl with a missing heart and missing legs.

(“You can’t speak right now,” Nadia tells her, and warms Leia’s cold hand between her own as tears spill out of her hollow eyes. “You didn’t forget me, did you?”)

(She didn’t.)

☀☀☀

 

Nadia doesn’t know when the time is right to hold Leia. She’s so used to Leia hopping up to her, with a bright smile and flailing arms and priceless expressions. But she can’t do that anymore, not when she’s missing her legs from the knees down.

“What are you doing here?” is the first thing she asks when she sees Nadia again, her voice matured into one suitable for a woman of twenty three.

Nadia doesn’t reply, just stares down at her and Leia’s joined hands. Why hasn’t she left yet?

But when she finally looks up to Leia, she’s smiling. A small smile, dim but true.

“You grew your hair out,” she tells Nadia.

Nadia stares at her, at the edges of Leia’s brown hair, where they cut to fix her bleeding skull, trimmed down around her head and no longer in her styled bob.

“It reminds me of the summer I saw you,” Leia finishes, and there’s a softness in her eyes.

Leia is dressed in white. White clothes. White skin. Trapped in a white box.

“Then you left,” Leia continues, her face tightening, fighting to keep her reassuring smile. “And he left.”

Nadia stands up.

“He left me.”

She doesn’t hesitate this time, and pulls Leia in to her open shoulder.

“Cry,” Nadia commands, and she does.

Nadia doesn’t complain when Leia’s howling into her neck, crying and begging and weeping for Jude. For Jude. Jude. Jude. Jude.

(Nadia’s father wasn’t there to teach Leia, after all. She’s disappointed Jude didn’t teach her anything.)

(He’s not there either to find Nadia crying as well.)

(Neither of them are.)

 

☀☀☀

 

Nadia requests more time away a week after she visits Leia that day. She’s offended by how quickly Wingul says they’ve already got her covered, it was if they were expecting this. She wants to punch the damn Pigeon where it hurts.

Though it pays off, in some strange way. She and Leia are in Leronde just after the doctor permits her to transfer to Dr. Mathis’ clinic, which Jude’s parents own. They stay at Leia’s old house, just nearby, where Nadia finds herself looking out into an empty sunflower field under the winter winds.

The house is practically Leia’s now, since her parent’s inn got big and they moved into the city. Their sunflower field is still alive and growing, though, when the summers come. Leia hopes for a bright and sunny summer, just like always. She says that whenever summers like those come, she remembers Nadia. The day she met her looking out into the field, trapped with a lonely expression.

(“It was probably love at first sight or one of your other stupid fairy tale notions, wasn’t it?” Nadia asks, the day she tells her in the hospital rehabilitation room on one of their many breaks.)

(Leia looks down. “Yeah, it was.”)

(It was the first time Nadia ever brought it up. Love.)

There’s a creak behind Nadia, and when she turns, Elize is there. She’s sitting on the floor, a fifteen year old girl still clinging to a toy a young nurse gave to her seven years before. Someone she used to call “Papa,” only a few years after.

“Are you just going to hide there?” Nadia asks, and she sees Elize cringe, curl up into herself, even though her back is facing Nadia. Nadia turns from her place on the Rolando porch to where Elize is sitting at the doorway. “Well? What do you want?”

Elize stands up, glares at Nadia. She’s taller than Nadia remembers, almost as tall as Leia. Her glares no longer held the life they used to, back when she was peeking out from behind Jude’s coat and sticking her tongue out at her dumb roommate. It’s all resentment now. And that’s all Nadia gets before the teen disappears into the townhouse once more.

“You scared her off.”

Nadia looks back out at the frosted fields again, wide and pale under the winter clouds. “I didn’t scare anyone. She hates me. Simple as that.”

Leia pulls up to where Nadia is dangling her legs off the porch side, and stops her wheelchair just next to her. “Jude used to take her here.”

“So I’m intruding, aren’t I?” Nadia replies, and snorts. “I want to be here too. I’ll go where I want.”

It catches her off guard when something warm and small presses against her hair, hot in contrast to the cold winter air. It burns her, in a pleasant sort of way, and when it’s gone, she looks up to Leia leaning down over her, longing in her eyes.

“I want you here too,” she replies. “For a long time, I’ve wanted it.”

She hangs her head, eyes dropping into the space between them and leaning against the armrest of her wheelchair.

“I just wanted to be more than this.”

Nadia takes in her cropped hair, her missing legs, the nasty scar that runs over her cheekbone, the wheelchair supporting her crippled body.

“You’re pretty stupid, trying to impress me,” Nadia says, standing up. “You’re putting in all this effort into trying to make yourself something you’re not.”

Leia leans against her wheelchair, staring up at Nadia’s small frame, and her smile disappears. “Trying is all I’ve ever known,” she tells Nadia.

And it’s genuine.

“Then it’s who you are,” Nadia tells her, and before another word is said, she takes Leia’s wheelchair and pushes her back inside of the townhouse. “I bet you Nurse Jude’s grinning his pretty little ass off up there, isn’t he? Glad you’re taking care of that girl of his, too.”

Leia is silent for a moment. Then giggles.

“I bet he is.”

☀☀☀

 

She kisses Leia in April, and moves into her room in May. It’s been so long since Nadia’s felt as if she’s been holding something so fragile, but Leia becomes stronger, brighter, the tighter Nadia holds her. Her shine returns, little by little.

Gaius sends her work from Fennmont, to help with money. It’s as if he knows too much, the bastard. She knows Senator Maxwell is helping too, Nadia’s seen her signature on the paperwork. She tells Leia this one night, when they’re lying in bed, Leia holding her close. Her partner laughs, saying that sounds just like Milla.

Elize is still weary of her, though. She talks to Leia on the porch, staring out into the fields with Teepo clutched close in her hands. Sometimes Nadia watches them. She leans up against the doorway and watches their backs as they spreak in soft tones to each other. There were times that Elize stood up and hugged Leia tight, and Leia would stroke her back in a comforting gesture, taming Elize shivering shoulders.

(It’s a familiar pain.)

One day, Nadia catches her when Leia is out with her parents at Leronde’s market. She stops at the dinner table where Elize is reading a book. She notices when Elize flinches, gripping the edges of her book and her lips pursing tight. Nadia sets down a mug of tea and allows the two of them to bask in the silence a little while longer.

Elize is nearly sixteen now. Nadia wonders if she made plans with Jude for when the time came.

(Christmas was close, the time she left her father in that fading house.)

“Jude told me he wanted to adopt you when he was sixteen.”

Elize’s shoulders curl in, and she hides behind her book as if to protect herself, one of her arms snaking around the doll in her lap. “Why would he tell someone like you that?”

Nadia takes a sip of her tea and shakes her head. “Don’t know. Who knows what that kid was thinking?” Elize glowers at her, but Nadia continues. “But he looked at you like my dad looked at me.”

Elize’s glower softens, even if just a little. “You never talk about your dad.” Her voice holds traces of accusation, if not sympathy. Nadia gets it, sorta.

“My dad taught me things, he wasn’t too bad,” Nadia tells her. “Jude was alright.”

“Jude was the best there was.” Nadia is sure Elize’s voice cracks at that. She pretends she never heard it.

“Better than Leia?”

Elize stays silent.

“She loved him too.” Nadia tells her.

Elize sobs.

“She, uh,” Nadia chokes on her words for a second, clutching her teacup, “loves you… too.”

Despite the awkward output, Elize is staring up at her, her book closed and her eyes filled with raw emotion. Nadia sits there, and she hates this feeling of uncertainty she’s getting from this situation. She’s got work to do and shit to take care of and here she is, comforting this girl that she might, maybe, sort of—

“She loves you too.”

Nadia looks back at Elize, and catches a glimpse of her embarrassed face.

“Leia… well… um…” Elize stammers out, “loves you too.”

“…I kn…” Nadia bites her tongue. “Uh…”

Elize stands up from her seat and goes out to open the porch doors to where the sunflowers are budding, reaching up to the blue Leronde sky. She walks out and stands on the porch, her pigtails catching the spring breeze.

“Jude used to take me out here, over to his house, just over there.” Elize points out to a place Nadia can’t see, compelling the woman to join her. Sure enough, she’s pointing to the Mathis clinic just beyond the fields. “But we would always come here with Leia.”

Elize is crying, Nadia notices. She doesn’t bother wiping her eyes, just takes in the scenery, the air of Leronde’s breeze.

“I liked to tease her about you, because Jude would always talk about she was still in love with this girl she met years before. But even then, I wanted them to get married.” Elize shakes her head. “He told me they couldn’t do that; they were in love with different people. I always wondered why, when they fit so perfectly for each other.”

“You think he would have been happy with that?” Nadia says.

“I wanted him to be happy,” Elize replies, and hiccups.

Nadia feels as if this is the time to hug her, but she doesn’t fit well in those kinds of situations. Leia is the one who usually hugs her, and Nadia knows her girlfriend well enough to know when she needs that kind of thing. But with this girl, she’s…

Damn it.

“Get over here,” Nadia tells the girl, and she falls into Nadia’s arms, shivering and sobbing into her chest.

Nadia never thought she would get so used to holding people like this, that she would be the one who would have to watch people cry like this.

When Leia comes home that evening, she’s fighting with Elize about what to put in the dinner that night. Leia bursts out into laughter when she hears them, echoing loud from the doorway. Nadia forces herself to leave dinner to Elize that night and joins Leia at the door.

A bouquet of dark red carnations pushes itself into her arms as soon as she meets her, and Nadia almost stumbles back at the sudden motion.

“What the hell?” Nadia says, staring at the carnations as if they were from another universe. “Why would you get me flowers?”

“Come on, I want to do nice things for my girlfriend, you know!” Leia retorts, pushing the flowers into Nadia’s hands. “You should just kiss me and be grateful, dummy!”

“How about not?” Nadia replies, pulling the flowers away and pushing Leia into the living room of their house.

“You’re so ungrateful,” Leia huffs, crossing her arms when Nadia pulls her up to the couch.

“Oh, you’re going to eat those words tonight,” Nadia says with a smirk, setting the flowers down. She helps Leia onto the couch, lying her down and crawling over her until she’s pulled her into a heated kiss. Leia sinks into the kiss without wasting time, sighing as Nadia threads her hands into Leia’s growing hair. She runs her tongue over Nadia’s lips, and that familiar, involuntary feeling of affection fills Nadia.

(She knew this girl was dangerous the day she met her.)

Nadia breaks the kiss, hovering over Leia with a tight expression. Leia stares back up at her, confused. “I, uh…” Nadia says. She finds it hard to meet Leia’s eyes, her hands caressing her girlfriend’s neck in an awkward gesture. Leia’s gaze is hopeful and waiting, but impatient at the same time. “I… you’re… not bad… but…”

“Leia, Nadia!” Elize calls from the kitchen, almost making Nadia fall off the couch. “Dinner’s soon! You have to help set up!”

“Damn it, Elly!” Nadia snaps back, shooting up from where she was straddling Leia, though she can’t help but feel relieved. That was completely embarrassing, what was she thinking?

“She called you Nadia.”

Nadia looks back down at Leia’s surprised face, her eyes shining with wonder. Nadia flinches, like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Leia’s face breaks out into a smile.

“You called her Elly.”

“I’m going to help the kid with dinner,” Nadia says, and hops off of her girlfriend with a heated face and clenched fists.

“No, wait, come on, Nadia!” Leia calls out, catching Nadia’s hand. “You didn’t finish!”

“I’m not going to!”

(She will, one day.)

 

☀☀☀

 

There’s a grave for Jude, next to their house, that looks out to the sunflowers every summer. It’s simple and small, nothing flashy like the guy would have wanted, but something plain and simple. Elize and Leia planted flowers for him, with some help hesitantly offered by Nadia, but they’ve made it into its special little garden over the past few years.

Sometimes, people came to visit it. They had to keep people here for that at times, nobody she really approved of. There was old professor of Jude’s, with a long white ponytail and all-knowing expression that Nadia knows Jude adopted from him. There’s annoying man that looks strangely familiar, with a cunning smirk and no sense of personal space, but always looks the most solemn when in front of Jude’s grave. There’s Senator Maxwell, who is bigger than life when around her excited girlfriend and… ward-daughter… thing.

The grave is brighter though, much better than it was doing as a blank strip of disturbed dirt as it was just a couple years ago. Now it’s filled with memorial flowers, flowers of people who once knew Leia and that Leronde doctor.

Nadia can see it from where she stands in front of the flower field, a spot of red in her field of vision. Whenwhen she looks a little to her left, she can see Leia on the porch, gazing out into the sea of sunflowers from her chair on the porch.

She’s dressed in gold, her hair falling to her shoulders and her skin a familiar color of earth. Nadia loves the feeling of that skin over her’s, the way she glows when Nadia looks up at her.

Nadia pulls her straw hat over her eyes to block her out. Yelling at Leia for sitting right where the sun is behind her, just as Nadia does every day. Leia yells at her to move, but then stops her so she can get Elly to take a picture.

“Leia, this is the same exact thing you see every summer!” Nadia hisses.

“I know, and you look beautiful every time! But it’s not official until it’s captured on camera!”

Nadia scowls, watching as Leia hops up onto the prosthetics Doctor Mathis designed for her and stretches out, stumbling a little.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Nadia tells her with a warning glare. “You’re just going to be the same thing every summer, anyways, there’s no need to put this worthless effort into taking pictures of me.”

Leia opens her mouth to snap something back, but something in Nadia’s words must have caught her off. She steps back, sputtering and wide-eyed at Nadia’s tense figure.

“U-Um…”

Nadia strides up to the porch and hops onto it. Leia yelps when Nadia shoves her face up to her’s, closing her eyes as if she’s expecting something, but nothing happens. Nadia pulls away instead, sporting a frustrated expression.

Without missing a beat, Nadia steps around Leia and disappears inside, leaving Leia out on the porch in a state of shock and confusion. Not a second later, she’s back out again, and an explosion of red fills Leia’s eyes.

“W-What the…”

“Nine,” Nadia tells her girlfriend, crossing her arms and curling into herself. She hates how hot her neck has gotten, how clammy her hands have become, what the woman has done to her. “Nine roses.”

“W-Wha… you bought me roses?” Leia stares at Nadia as if she’s something of a wonder, wondering what happened to her girlfriend, and Nadia can’t stand it.

“I bought you nine roses!” Nadia snaps back at her. “And I gave nine for Elize, and nine for your parents, and nine for stupid Dr. Mathis and his wife—”

“Y-You gave roses to Dr. Mathis?” Leia says, shocked.

“AND I sent nine to Gaius, and nine to Wingul, and nine to Jiao, and nine to Presa—”

“What, why would you—”

“And nine to Rowen, and nine to that shit Alvin, and nine to Maxwell, and nine for Jude!”

Nadia takes a breath, and she knows Leia is staring at Jude’s grave, clutching her own roses close to her chest, unsure.

“Why… Why did you buy everyone we know roses?” Leia asks, staring at Nadia.

Nadia grits her teeth. Why is this so hard? “I bought everyone I met through you roses, moron.” Nadia shoves her shoulder in a fit of frustration, turning away. “What’s nine times twelve? You’re not that stupid.”

Leia takes a moment to think, and another to process it.

She lets out a shrill sound that Nadia supposes is a gasp, fumbling with the roses in front of her as if she’s carrying a priceless relic. Her wide eyes fixate on Nadia with disbelief in her that transforms into tears in seconds.

“H-Hey, don’t cry, dumbass, you—”

Leia kisses her before she can say another word, roses pressed between them. Nadia is so glad she got those thorns cut. They didn’t suit her lover anyways.

It’s a lingering kiss, not one filled with heated passion like when they wrapped themselves in nights of ecstasy. Not faint and small like ones stolen between the busy hours. One filled with as much desire and love as Nadia never could have dreamed of until then. It’s quiet and warm and safe. It’s everything she’s ever dreamed of.

And she’s sure Leia’s dreamed of it too.

“I love you.”

Leia drops the flowers and pulls Nadia into a tight embrace, hugging her and crying loudly like it’s the end of the world. Elize has long since arrived at the doorway, standing in shock as she watched Leia cry and hold Nadia in a fit of wails. It’s one of the most embarrassing things Nadia thinks she’ll ever experience, hearing this stupid off-tune, overenthusiastic voice cry out in front of their teenage whatever-she-may-be.

But she can’t bring herself to care.

(She smiles, instead.)

**Author's Note:**

> For the curious  
> 108 Roses = "Marry me."


End file.
